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The estampie is similar in form to the lai, consisting of a succession of repeated sections (Bellingham 2002). According to Johannes de Grocheio, there were both vocal and instrumental estampies (for which he used the Latin calque "stantipes"), which differed somewhat in form, in that the vocal estampie begins with a refrain, which is repeated at the end of each verse (Page 2012). Also according to Grocheio, the repeating sections in both the vocal and instrumental estampie were called puncta (singular punctus) (Hiley 2001), in the form:

aa, bb, cc, etc..

The two statements of each punctus differ only in their endings, described as apertum ("open") and clausum ("closed") by Grocheio, who believed that six puncta were standard for the stantipes (his term for the estampie), though he was aware of stantipes with seven puncta (Hiley 2001). The structure can therefore be diagrammed as:

a+x, a+y; b+w, b+z; etc..

Sometimes the same two endings are used for all the puncta,[citation needed] producing the structure

a+x, a+y; b+x, b+y, c+x, c+y, etc..

A similar structure was shared with the saltarello, another medieval dance.

The earliest reported example of this musical form is the song "Kalenda maya", written by the troubadourRaimbaut de Vaqueiras (1180–1207) to the melody of an estampida played by French jongleurs.[citation needed] All other known examples are purely instrumental pieces.[contradiction] Fourteenth-century examples include estampies with subtitles such as "Lamento di Tristano", "La Manfredina", Salterello, "Isabella", "Tre fontane".[citation needed]

Though the estampie is generally monophonic, there are also two-voice compositions in the form of an estampie, such as the three for keyboard in the Robertsbridge Fragment.

According to Grocheio, the fiddle was the supreme instrument of the period, and the stantipes, together with the cantus coronatus and ductia, were the principal forms played on fiddles before the wealthy in their celebration (Page 2001).

The idealized dance character of all these pieces suggests that the estampie may have been a true dance but there are no surviving dance manuals describing the estampie as a dance. Illuminations and paintings from the period seem to indicate that the estampie involves fairly vigorous hopping. Some estampies, such as the famous Tre fontane ("Three Fountains") estampie, contain florid and virtuosic instrumental writing, signifying that they may have been intended as abstract performance music rather than actual dance music.[citation needed]

The etymology of the name is disputed; an alternative name of the dance is stantipes, which suggests that one foot was stationary during the dance; but the more widely accepted etymology relates it to estamper, to stamp the feet.[citation needed]

According to the OED, however, the name comes from the Provençal estampida, feminine of estampit, the past participle of estampir "to resound" (Oxford English Dictionary 2005).